Shrunken God Bloodless Cross Impotent Christ — E.A. Johnston

Great God, I pray that you will bless and attend the preaching of your word, and that your spirit will come and disturb folks, that you will show mercy to a poor sinner, and bring that person to the very verge of hell tonight, and let them hear the cries and shrieks of the damned, and smell the sulfur from the bottomless pit.

I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I'm going to be honest with your souls tonight, friends, and give you, like we say in the South, the oil straight from the can. The church has been lying to folks for years by saying that we can be saved by a little decision, without our hearts being plowed by a holy God, without the spirit of God bringing conviction of sin, without ever being awakened to our lost condition, and being alarmed and disturbed by the fact that we are on our way to hell.

We just accept an impotent Jesus who stands helplessly at the door of our heart. There he stands with his hat in his hand, helpless, like an insurance salesman, knocking and knocking. Won't you let him in?

We have committed two crimes in our day, friends. We evangelists have shrunken God down to our size, and we've taken salvation out of the hands of God and given it to man. You decide to make yourself a Christian.

You decide when and when you will do it. But we must stop using carnal methods and man-centered methodologies in return to preach in a God-centered gospel that shuts men up to God for salvation. But mainstream religion is a powerful thing, and if you dare go against the tide of your denomination, they'll get out of club and kill you.

That's what the religious leaders did to Christ in his day. You start preaching man's duty of repentance, and you have the good deacons throwing their shiny shoes at you. You start preaching Christ and him crucified, and they will crucify you.

You tell men and women and boys and girls that they must be born again, or they cannot see the kingdom of God. They'll turn you out of their churches. You start being honest with folks and warn them of a burning hell and a future judgment that awaits all mankind.

Why, you'll have a fight on your hands. You start preaching that saving faith comes from God because salvation is in the sovereign hands of God and God alone, and they'll try to nail you up on a cross as well.

You start preaching holiness and the lordship of Jesus Christ and the religious folk will plum run you out of town. I've been denounced by more Baptist preachers than I can shake a stick at. They said I had no right to preach.

They said I spoke heresy because I preached holy living, but only an ungodly man will cry out against holiness, for God himself said, be holy for I am holy. I went paid a visit to the head of my missions board for my denomination within my community.

I told him I was available for pulpit supply. I'd preach anywhere. I'd preach on revival. I'd preach for evangelism if he wanted me to. And as I told him what kind of preacher I was and the kind of preaching I did, I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was growing angry and he couldn't wait to get me out the door.

And he never called me once to preach for him and he wouldn't return my phone calls. This stuff we call evangelism today has only damned the souls of men. When the churches got on a building campaign, pastors became butchers of souls.

They diluted the gospel message to make it more palatable to sinful man. Modern evangelism has broadened the way of salvation in ways Jesus never did. We hid discipleship down in the basement of the church and threw holiness out the window.

Then we went and killed off the weekly prayer meeting, which was the only source of power we had. The churches figured out they could get more done today with money and manpower. But I remember a time, friends, when the church operated on God and holy ghost power.

And our evangelists went and got out their pliers and pulled all the teeth out of Calvary. Then they went and got out their mop buckets and mopped up all the blood and gore there to make the cross so pristine you can sit and have your lunch there.

We must stop preaching a shrunken God and a bloodless cross and an impotent Christ. I remember preachers who weren't afraid of nothing, but they called sin black and hell hot. And they warned folks about a future judgment that awaits all mankind.

They were not afraid of men, but only feared a holy God. And when they preached, they preached a bloody cross and a bloodstained savior from sin who was crucified there at Calvary becoming a curse for us because his death was a scandal.

He was numbered with the transgressors that Christ suffered, died, and was buried. And he rose again and now sits at the right hand of the Father. And he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. Well, that's my introduction, friends.

Let's get down to business in the real meat of my sermon this evening, which is entitled A Shrunken God, A Bloodless Cross, and an Impotent Christ. In Jeremiah 23, 29, we read, It's not my word, like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.

Here, the word of God is described as a fire and a hammer. Let me ask you, friend, what does a fire do? It awakens and alarms. If you are sound asleep in bed and a fire breaks out in your house, you will awaken and become alarmed to your danger.

That's what good preaching should do. It should awaken and alarm awakened men to their lost condition and alarm them of their great peril and danger of being damned in a burning hell. What does a hammer do?

It pounds away and pounds away on a nail until the work is done. Sound preaching will pound away on a sinner's conscience and break up all false foundations to the point to where Christ is seen as the only way of redemption.

Men lie in darkness and are blinded by sin, and smooth preaching won't help them. Men can't see the beauty of Christ's holiness because they love their sins, and men can't see the righteousness of Christ because they have a good opinion already of themselves.

Men are dead in trespasses and sin and blinded by the devil. A hell-bound sinner will not come to my blessed Lord apart from God in his mercy, arresting them and awakening them and working a work of mercy in them by his grace.

You believe you are the master of your soul and you sit and rule on the throne of your heart, but you do so, friend, in a jail cell on death row. You're a captive of the devil only in religious garb, and your good works won't save your soul.

The devil has chains on you. He has blinded your eyes and given you a false religious peace while you were dead in sin, sitting there on death row under the condemnation of the law. I wonder how many self-satisfied unconverted church members are heading for the very hell they hope to avoid.

How can you believe in him as Lord when you are the Lord of your own life? Many are religious and lost in our churches today. They know nothing about a transformed life. They are strangers to a work of grace upon the heart, strangers to the life of God in the soul of man.

They just made a little decision somewhere some years ago and made a mental flip for Jesus and joined the church and got baptized by receiving a shrunken God who won't get in the way of their daily living.

But as believers, we should be dead to sin. The apostle Peter declares, who, his own self, bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live onto righteousness by whose stripes you were healed.

When you get saved, friend, your life is no longer your own. Your time is not your own. Your money is not your own. Your body is not your own. Christ must be a complete master. Jesus is Lord and you must submit to his lordship.

Jesus is Lord by divine appointment of Almighty God. And if you want to be saved, friend, you must come as a captured rebel, would kneel before a sovereign and throw down your weapons of rebellion and submit to him as Lord, incomplete and utter surrender, and then own him as your savior and Lord.

Anything less than that is a false profession that comes from false assurance by hanging onto a false hope of heaven and resting upon the rotten plank boards of an empty religious profession. Self must be dethroned and another enthroned there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But we live in a day of lawlessness. There's lawlessness in the land. There's lawlessness in the churches. People reject authority. Men and women today join the same crowd in Jesus' day and they shake their fists in rebellion and cry out, we will not have this man reign over us.

But the gospel has rights and claims on all followers of Christ Jesus. You must get to the point, friend, where you can resist them no longer. Christ must rule in your daily living for he is Lord. Some folks are going to run their life right down to hell.

They are devil-blinded sinners in love with their sins and they hate, absolutely hate the lordship of Christ in all things holy. Most religious folks feel they are good enough for heaven and not bad enough for hell.

But they are deceived. They hold a false view of God and say, God is all love and tolerant toward my sin. But God's word declares otherwise, friend. For if God spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment and spared not the old world but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with a overthrow, making them an example unto those that after should live ungodly.

There are warnings replete all throughout scripture that speak of God's justice and vengeance upon sin. If you think you can play footsie with sin, friend, and still call yourself a Christian, you are greatly deceived.

The prophet Elijah asked his crowd gathered at Mount Carmel a burning question. How long, haughty, between two opinions, if the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him? Listen, friend, you cannot serve God with a divided heart.

He won't accept it. Christ must be your all in all. He must have first place, first allegiance, and first call in your life. The lordship of Christ is the foremost duty of all followers of him. You must move and live and breathe under his lordship.

Our modern evangelism has created a generation of men and women and boys and girls who walk the Nile in response to a emotional appeal to accept Jesus, and they've lived their entire religious church life on a false hope of heaven because they know nothing about Jesus as Lord of their life.

They run their own show. They wear their religion on their sleeve, and one of the most difficult people to be around is a lost man who just got some religion. Christ must be made alive to you, and saving faith must be given to you.

If you're saved, friend, it's because God gave you saving faith. That promise must be quickened to you. That scripture must be made alive to you. Man cannot savingly believe on Christ apart from a work of grace in his heart, wrought by the spirit of God.

You must see him for who he is. He is Lord. Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. That cross had Christ's blood all over it. It was spattered by his blood when they drove the nails into his hands and feet.

His blood dripped down from that cross as it oozed from his pierced side. The law must be vindicated, and it must be satisfied. Man is a sinner who has broken God's holy and unbending law. Every individual, every mother's son, at a future judgment, will be held up against the strictness and severity of God's unbending law.

He will drop his plumb line alongside of you, friend, and if you stand there in your own merits, you will fail that test. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. You must stand in the merits of another, the Lord Jesus Christ.

You listen to E .A. Johnston tonight, friend, because I'll see you at the judgment. I'll see you at the judgment. If you don't repent, you will surely go to hell. If you're not born again, you will never, ever see the kingdom of God.

If Jesus is not your Lord, then he will not be your savior. If you remain in your natural condition, you will surely die in your sins and be thrust into an eternity you were quite unprepared for. This little stuff we call salvation today is but an empty balloon and just hot air.

Many today mistake church membership for salvation, and many today hold a false hope of heaven that is nothing more than a hole in the wall. Romans declares, faith cometh by hearing, faith cometh by hearing.

The only hope you have, friend, is that you won't just hear the voice of this poor shaky preacher, but instead you'll hear his voice as it comes to you in power, majesty, and authority. His life must be laid down and applied to me.

Draw nigh to him, for he is Lord. He is Lord. He is a risen Lord. But you must receive a revealed Christ, friend. God must open your blind eyes so you can behold him and ask God, friend. Go to God, friend.

Seek God, friend, for the grace to see his only begotten son. Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else. Listen, friend, the pearl of great price, Jesus, is worth selling all for and losing all for, so he may be gained.

He must become your all in all, but you must hear from him. You must receive a revealed Christ. I hear the Savior say, Thy strength indeed is small. Child of weakness, watch and pray. Find in me thine all in all.

Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. For nothing good have I whereby thy grace to claim. I'll wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary's lamb.

Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. And when before the throne I stand in him complete, Jesus died my soul to save, my lips shall still repeat.

Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.